Wintershall specializes in energy and is a wholly owned subsidiary of BASF, based in Ludwigshafen. Wintershall is active in various regions of the world in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas. In Europe the BASF subsidiary trades and sells natural gas. The company markets storage capacities for oil and gas, transportation capacities for gas as well as optic fiber capacities.
Wintershall has been active in the exploration and production of oil and gas for more than 75 years, and with its headquarters in Kassel, it is now Germany’s largest producer of crude oil and natural gas. In its exploration and production activities, Wintershall is deliberately focusing on selected core regions where the company possesses a wealth of regional and technological expertise. These regions include Europe, North Africa, South America as well as Russia and the Caspian Sea region. The majority of the total natural gas and crude oil produced by Wintershall comes from deposits where Wintershall itself is the operating company.
The company is actively pursuing a policy of ongoing investment in the development of new deposits and the expansion of existing fields. While doing so, Wintershall attaches the same importance to the stringent environmental protection and work safety requirements as it does to its economic targets.
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 F16 – our largest platform |
In Exploration and Production Wintershall succeeded in raising the production of crude oil and natural gas slightly above last year’s level, to 112 million barrels oil equivalent in 2007. Although crude oil and condensate production declined year-on-year by one percent to 8.4 million tons, partly due to the farming out of a concession in Dubai, natural gas production rose by four percent in 2007 to 7.8 billion cubic meters. 389 percent of the volumes produced in 2007 were replenished. The total reserve-to-production ratio was ten years (2006: seven years). This figure is based on Wintershall’s share of production in 2007 and refers to the reserves at year end.
In 2000, Exploration and Production was set the target of increasing oil and gas production in the first decade of the new millennium by 50 percent - in terms of production volume, the target was 120 barrels oil equivalent. However, the 2010 target will now be met sometime in 2008. Hence a new and challenging target for oil and gas production has been set: the target for oil and gas production is now approx. 140 million barrels oil equivalent by 2010.
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 Rehden natural gas storage facility |
Natural Gas Trading, which Wintershall runs together with its Russian partner OAO Gazprom, is Wintershall’s second core activity sector after exploration and production. In 2007, sales of the three joint venture companies (WINGAS, WIEE, WIEH), held jointly with OAO Gazprom – increased by five percent to 368.4 billion kilowatt hours (2006: 351) in the first quarter of 2007 despite the mild weather. WINGAS was responsible for 249.8 billion kilowatt hours (2006: 228.2) of this figure. The company continued to grow in Germany and abroad – contrary to the general market trend – and was able to increase sales by almost ten percent. As such, WINGAS recorded the highest natural gas sales in the company’s history in 2007.
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 Production of natural gas in Sibiria |
Wintershall and Gazprom teamed up in 1990 for the joint marketing of natural gas. WINGAS supplies natural gas to public utilities, regional gas suppliers, industrial facilities and power plants in Germany and other European countries via WINGAS TRANSPORT’s network of pipelines, which now extends to over 2,000 kilometers (the UK, Belgium, France, Austria, the Czech Republic and Denmark). In 2007, WINGAS supplied more than 60 customers in Germany and abroad using the infrastructure of third parties. The German-Russian partners have invested about 3 billion euros in developing a gas pipeline system, which links the major gas reserves in Siberia to the growing markets in Western Europe. With its storage facility at Rehden in North Germany, which provides a working gas volume of over 4 billion cubic meters, WINGAS possesses about one fifth of the total storage capacity available in Germany. In addition to Western Europe’s largest gas storage facility in Rehden and the new natural gas storage facility in Haidach near Salzburg (Austria), which recently went into operation, further capacities are also to be created in England (Saltfleetby) and near the Dutch-German border at Jemgum.
Wintershall and Gazprom are set to extend and intensify their successful cooperation internationally in future: Wintershall now has a 35% share in the profits of the Yuzhno Russkoye natural gas field in Western Siberia. In return, Gazprom increased its interest in WINGAS GmbH & Co. KG to 50% minus one share. Gazprom also received a 49% stake in a Wintershall subsidiary, which produces onshore crude oil in two concession areas in Libya.
he Nord Stream pipeline is to be built to increase supply security and ensure long-term cover for Germany’s and Western Europe’s growing demand for gas imports. Wintershall has a 20 percent interest in the project. The Nord Stream pipeline will run from the Russian town of Vyborg over 1,200 kilometers through the Baltic Sea and will come on land at the German Baltic Sea coast near Greifswald. Preparations are currently underway for the construction of the onshore connection of the Nord Stream pipeline to the WINGAS pipeline system: the OPAL (Ostsee-Pipeline-Anbindungs-Leitung, Baltic Sea pipeline link), which will run over 480 kilometers from Greifswald to Olbernhau on the Czech-German border, and the NEL (Norddeutsche Erdgas-Leitung, Northern German gas link), which will run south of Bremen from Greifswald to Achim.
As a result, Wintershall was not able to repeat the record figures of the previous year: in 2007 1 profit from operating activities 2 fell to 3.01 billion euros (2006: 3.25), although Wintershall is still the segment with the strongest result in the BASF Group. Of this figure, 2.47 billion euros (2006: 2.65) was attributable to exploration and production and 544 million euros (2006: 605) came from natural gas trading. The difficult market conditions were equally detrimental to both segments.
Wintershall employs more than 1840 staff from more than 30 countries.
1 IFRS accounting since 2005. Figures correspond to those reported for the BASF Group’s Oil and Gas Segment.
2 The figure stated for profit from operating activities is before non-deductible income taxes on crude oil production in North Africa and the Middle East.
